This invention relates to the field of tape transports for magnetic tape recorders. More particularly, this invention relates to tape transports having flangeless tape reel hubs and a peripheral tape drive.
Peripheral tape drives are well known in the art. Reference is hereby made to my prior U.S. Pat. No. 3,620,473, assigned to the assignee hereof, for a disclosure and discussion of peripheral drive tape transports. As pointed out in my said U.S. Pat. No. 3,620,473, peripheral tape drive systems having flangeless hubs, although known in the art, are often plagued with the serious problem of tape spills. Because of the problem of tape spills, flanged hubs have been employed. While flanged hubs are certainly satisfactory to solve the problem of tape spills, they do involve a size or space disadvantage. That is, the hub shafts or spindles must be spaced apart a sufficient distance to avoid interference between the hub flanges, and thus the minimum distance between hub centers is determined by the diameters of the hub flanges. By way of contrast a flangeless configuration permits the hub shafts to be moved closer together, the minimum separation distance being just slightly greater than the radius of one of the tape packs when fully wound on one of the hubs plus the radius of an empty hub. Thus, flangeless configurations are important where space requirements are critical. A significant cost advantage can also be realized by eliminating the flanges.
Also in belt drive systems such as my prior U.S. Pat. No. 3,620,473, flangeless tape hubs may develop a problem in the drive belt gradually drifting and disengaging from the tape.
Still another aspect of the prior art is that high precision (and thus costly) preloaded ball bearings are required for the hub shafts to prevent wobbling of the hubs which would result in both tape and belt spills.